


Haven

by CodingGengar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-31 10:37:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10897602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CodingGengar/pseuds/CodingGengar
Summary: Tom has nothing for himself in the orphanage but the view from his window. At Hogwarts, he has a legacy.





	Haven

The first time Tom feels the power inside him, he's hungry.

The sisters have called him for dinner but he doesn't go. Every evening, at roughly the same time, he sits in front of the window and looks out. The small church, barely more than a chapel, is unrestrained in its manmade beauty. Tom likes to see it, to observe it and memorise every little detail of it. That church is the only thing of beauty he finds in the orphanage.

(When he's older he reflects on that and discovers that it isn't the architecture what attracts him, but the sheer wonder of how can one have buildings made for himself, to last through millennia so the people —sheeps pretending to be more than what they can ever be— can worship his name peacefully. Tom wants that for himself.)

That's when Tom feels it. When he thinks of everything he can accomplish, of everything he can do once he's out of this bottomless pit of boredom, the power comes.

At first, Tom barely feels more than the hunger and thinks that he should have gone to dinner. He crushes the thought when the reminder of the happy children —those who have resigned themselves to being the prisoners of a system meant to care for them— and the smiles they stick in their faces makes his lips tense in disgust. How weak they are.

So, amidst the hunger, the spark of something special comes from inside his chest. It flickers and Tom is startled. There is something alive inside him, and it isn't his own heart. The beating of it is steady, but rises to match the anticipation of that other living, breathing thing that fills his chest, his blood, his soul with something beautiful and indescribable that Tom has never felt before.

(Or maybe he has and doesn't remember, because accidental magic happens to everyone, including genius like him.)

That's when his magic manifests for the first time in a swirl of gold that is barely visible but that Tom can feel because it's a part of him that reaches out to the world.

It's more shocking when the world responds and his window is suddenly frozen in the middle of summer.

It's just the start of everything because Tom experiments until he can't feel his eyes closing as he goes to sleep without meaning to. Plenty of times he wakes up half sitting against the wall and half resting on the bed and once (only once, he makes sure of that) he wakes up to a raging fire that is somehow contained in his room.

And even if he can do all these things, it doesn't compare to the ease with which he reaches out and touches the minds of others. It's a song his mind sings when he's bored and, all around him, people turn to look for the one who has their subconscious attention. They never find him because he's a child, and muggles don't look at children and see magic at work.

(Everything changes when he goes to Hogwarts because that's home and Tom loves it. He likes to explore and find secret passages, hidden rooms and staircases that take him to different places every time.)

When he goes to Hogwarts, that magic takes him deep into the castle and gives him a gift. A place he can call his own because his lineage has taken him here, where everything is green and black with slivers of silver adorning walls and statues.

The Chamber of Secrets is that favoured place that Tom goes to escape from the world when it's too much.

(And there is too much of everything. Too much magic calling out to him and he is unable to respond in case someone looks his way and sees him practising the Dark Arts. There are, also, too many idiots and Tom runs away from the useless ones. Morgana knows the useful idiots will bind themselves to Tom before his stay at Hogwarts is over.)

In the Chamber, Tom lets go of the facade he wears. The perfect Slytherin boy is replaced by something unnatural —but still very much a Slytherin— and he feels like a changeling because he's happy in that place that reeks of snakes and the darkest of magics. And he doesn't want to go back.

(But he has to go back. He has to learn much more so one day he can live as the greatest man who ever walked on Earth.)

So, he comes back every day since he discovers the Chamber. It's an empty haven waiting for him to make it a home. Someday, Tom will make it a home. For now, the Chamber will remain a secret place where his rendezvous with magic happens.

He closes his eyes and remembers the window facing the church. During the summers, when he goes back to the orphanage, that's all he has. Here, though, the world is his.


End file.
